food, in house or in field, by stealth;--if undiscovered, he wasapplauded; if detected, punished. Two main-springs of action wereconstructed within him--the dread of shame and the love of country.These were motives, it is true, common to all the Grecian states, butthey seem to have been especially powerful in Sparta. But the lastproduced its abuse in one of the worst vices of the nationalcharacter. The absorbing love for his native Sparta rendered thecitizen singularly selfish towards other states, even kindred to thatwhich he belonged to. Fearless as a Spartan,--when Sparta wasunmenaced he was lukewarm as a Greek. And this exaggerated yetsectarian patriotism, almost peculiar to Sparta, was centred, not onlyin the safety and greatness of the state, but in the inalienablepreservation of its institutions;--a feeling carefully sustained by apolicy exceedingly jealous of strangers [139]. Spartans were notpermitted to travel. Foreigners were but rarely permitted a residencewithin the city: and the Spartan dislike to Athens arose rather fromfear of the contamination of her principles than from envy at thelustre of her fame. When we find (as our history proceeds) theSpartans dismissing their Athenian ally from the siege of Ithome, werecognise their jealousy of the innovating character of theirbrilliant neighbour;--they feared the infection of the democracy ofthe Agora. This attachment to one exclusive system of governmentcharacterized all the foreign policy of Sparta, and crippled thenational sense by the narrowest bigotry and the obtusest prejudice.Wherever she conquered, she enforced her own constitution, no matterhow inimical to the habits of the people, never dreaming that what wasgood for Sparta might be bad for any other state. Thus, when sheimposed the Thirty Tyrants on Athens, she sought, in fact, toestablish her own gerusia; and, no doubt, she imagined it wouldbecome, not a curse, but a blessing to a people accustomed to thewildest freedom of a popular assembly. Though herself, through thetyranny of the ephors, the unconscious puppet of the democraticaction, she recoiled from all other and more open forms of democracyas from a pestilence. The simple habits of the Spartan life assistedto confirm the Spartan prejudices. A dinner, a fine house, thesesturdy Dorians regarded as a pitiable sign of folly. They had norespect for any other cultivation of the mind than that which producedbold men and short sentences. Them, nor the science of Aristotle, northe dreams of Plato were fitted to delight. Music and dancing wereindeed cultivated among them, and with success and skill; but themusic and the dance were always of one kind--it was a crime to vary anair [140] or invent a measure. A martial, haughty, and superstitioustribe can scarcely fail to be attached to poetry,--war is ever theinspiration of song,--and the eve of battle to a Spartan was theseason of sacrifice to the Muses. The poetical temperament seems tohave been common among this singular people. But the dread ofinnovation, when carried to excess, has even worse effect uponliterary genius than legislative science; and though Sparta produced afew poets gifted, doubtless, with the skill to charm the audience theyaddressed, not a single one of the number has bequeathed to us anyother memorial than his name. Greece, which preserved, as in a commontreasury, whatever was approved by her unerring taste, her wonderfulappreciation of the beautiful, regarded the Spartan poetry with anindifference which convinces us of its want of value. Thebes, and notSparta, has transmitted to us the Dorian spirit in its noblest shape:and in Pindar we find how lofty the verse that was inspired by itspride, its daring, and its sublime reverence for glory and the gods.As for commerce, manufactures, agriculture,--the manual arts--suchpeaceful occupations were beneath the dignity of a Spartan--they werestrictly prohibited by law as by pride, and were left to the Perioecior the Helots.

VIII. It was evidently necessary to this little colony to be united.Nothing unites men more than living together in common. The syssitia,or public tables, an institution which was common in Crete, in Corinth[141], and in Megara, effected this object in a mode agreeable to theDorian manners. The society at each table was composed of menbelonging to the same tribe or clan. New members could only beelected by consent of the rest. Each head of a family in Sparta paidfor his own admission and that of the other members of his house. Menonly belonged to them. The youths and boys had their own separatetable. The young children, however, sat with their parents on lowstools, and received a half share. Women were excluded. Despite thecelebrated black broth, the table seems to have been sufficiently, ifnot elegantly, furnished. And the second course, consisting ofvoluntary gifts, which was supplied by the poorer members from theproduce of the chase--by the wealthier from their flocks, orchards,poultry, etc., furnished what by Spartans were considered dainties.Conversation was familiar, and even jocose, and relieved by songs.Thus the public tables (which even the kings were ordinarily obligedto attend) were rendered agreeable and inviting by the attractions ofintimate friendship and unrestrained intercourse.

IX. The obscurest question relative to the Spartan system is thatconnected with property. It was evidently the intention of Lycurgusor the earlier legislators to render all the divisions of land andwealth as equal as possible. But no law can effect what societyforbids. The equality of one generation cannot be transmitted toanother. It may be easy to prevent a great accumulation of wealth,but what can prevent poverty? While the acquisition of lands bypurchase was forbidden, no check was imposed on its acquisition bygift or testament; and in the time of Aristotle land had become themonopoly of the few. Sparta, like other states, had consequently herinequalities--her comparative rich and her positive poor--from anearly period in her known history. As land descended to women, somarriages alone established great disparities of property. "Were thewhole territory," says Aristotle, "divided into five portions, twowould belong to the women." The regulation by which the man who couldnot pay his quota to the syssitia was excluded from the public tables,proves that it was not an uncommon occurrence to be so excluded; andindeed that exclusion grew at last so common, that the public tablesbecame an aristocratic instead of a democratic institution.Aristotle, in later times, makes it an objection to the ephoralgovernment that poor men were chosen ephors, and that their venalityarose from their indigence--a moral proof that poverty in Sparta musthave been more common than has generally been supposed [142];--men ofproperty would not have chosen their judges and dictators in paupers.Land was held and cultivated by the Helots, who paid a certain fixedproportion of the produce to their masters. It is said that Lycurgusforbade the use of gold and silver, and ordained an iron coinage; butgold and silver were at that time unknown as coins in Sparta, and ironwas a common medium of exchange throughout Greece. The interdictionof the precious metals was therefore of later origin. It seems tohave only related to private Spartans. For those who, not beingSpartans of the city--that is to say, for the Laconians or Perioeci--engaged in commerce, the interdiction could not have existed. A morepernicious regulation it is impossible to conceive. While iteffectually served to cramp the effects of emulation--to stint thearts--to limit industry and enterprise--it produced the direct objectit was intended to prevent;--it infected the whole state with thedesire of gold--it forbade wealth to be spent, in order that wealthmight be hoarded; every man seems to have desired gold preciselybecause he could make very little use of it! From the king to theHelot [143], the spirit of covetousness spread like a disease. Nostate in Greece was so open to bribery--no magistracy so corrupt asthe ephors. Sparta became a nation of misers precisely because itcould not become a nation of spendthrifts. Such are the results whichman produces when his legislation deposes nature!

X. In their domestic life the Spartans, like the rest of the Greeks,had but little pleasure in the society of their wives. At first theyoung husband only visited his bride by stealth--to be seen in companywith her was a disgrace. But the women enjoyed a much greater freedomand received a higher respect in Sparta than elsewhere; the softAsiatic distinctions in dignity between the respective sexes did notreach the hardy mountaineers of Lacedaemon; the wife was the mother ofmen! Brought up in robust habits, accustomed to athletic exercises,her person exposed in public processions and dances, which, but forthe custom that made decorous even indecency itself, would have beenindeed licentious, the Spartan maiden, strong, hardy, and half apartaker in the ceremonies of public life, shared the habits, aidedthe emulation, imbibed the patriotism, of her future consort. And, byher sympathy with his habits and pursuits, she obtained an influenceand ascendency over him which was unknown in the rest of Greece.Dignified on public occasions, the Spartan matron was deemed, however,a virago in private life; and she who had no sorrow for a slaughteredson, had very little deference for a living husband. Her obedience toher spouse appears to have been the most cheerfully rendered uponthose delicate emergencies when the service of the state required hersubmission to the embraces of another! [144]

XI. We now come to the most melancholy and gloomy part of the Spartansystem--the condition of the Helots.

The whole fabric of the Spartan character rested upon slavery. If itwere beneath a Spartan to labour--to maintain himself--to cultivateland--to build a house--to exercise an art;--to do aught else than tofight an enemy--to choose an ephor--to pass from the chase or thepalaestra to the public tables--to live a hero in war--an aristocratin peace,--it was clearly a supreme necessity to his very existence asa citizen, and even as a human being, that there should be asubordinate class of persons employed in the occupations rejected byhimself, and engaged in providing for the wants of this privilegedcitizen. Without Helots the Spartan was the most helpless of humanbeings. Slavery taken from the Spartan state, the state would fall atonce! It is no wonder, therefore, that this institution should havebeen guarded with an extraordinary jealousy--nor that extraordinaryjealousy should have produced extraordinary harshness. It is exactlyin proportion to the fear of losing power that men are generallytyrannical in the exercise of it. Nor is it from cruelty ofdisposition, but from the anxious curse of living among men whomsocial circumstances make his enemies because his slaves, that adespot usually grows ferocious, and that the urgings of suspicioncreate the reign of terror. Besides the political necessity of astrict and unrelaxed slavery, a Spartan would also be callous to thesufferings, from his contempt for the degradation, of the slave; as hedespised the employments abandoned to the Helot, even so would hedespise the wretch that exercised them. Thus the motives that renderpower most intolerant combined in the Spartan in his relations to theHelot--viz., 1st, necessity for his services, lost perhaps if the curbwere ever relaxed--2dly, consummate contempt for the individual hedebased. The habit of tyranny makes tyranny necessary. When theslave has been long maddened by your yoke, if you lighten it for amoment he rebels. He has become your deadliest foe, and self-preservation renders it necessary that him whom you provoke tovengeance you should crush to impotence. The longer, therefore, theSpartan government endured, the more cruel became the condition of theHelots. Not in Sparta were those fine distinctions of rank whichexist where slavery is unknown, binding class with class by ties ofmutual sympathy and dependance--so that Poverty itself may be abenefactor to Destitution. Even among the poor the Helot had nobrotherhood! he was as necessary to the meanest as to the highestSpartan--his wrongs gave its very existence to the commonwealth. Wecannot, then, wonder at the extreme barbarity with which the Spartanstreated this miserable race; and we can even find something of excusefor a cruelty which became at last the instinct of self-preservation.Revolt and massacre were perpetually before a Spartan's eyes; and whatman will be gentle and unsuspecting to those who wait only the momentto murder him?

XII. The origin of the Helot race is not clearly ascertained: thepopular notion that they were the descendants of the inhabitants ofHelos, a maritime town subdued by the Spartans, and that they weredegraded to servitude after a revolt, is by no means a conclusiveaccount. Whether, as Mueller suggests, they were the original slavepopulation of the Achaeans, or whether, as the ancient authoritiesheld, they were such of the Achaeans themselves as had mostobstinately resisted the Spartan sword, and had at last surrenderedwithout conditions, is a matter it is now impossible to determine.For my own part, I incline to the former supposition, partly becauseof the wide distinction between the enslaved Helots and the (merely)inferior Perioeci, who were certainly Achaeans; a distinction which Ido not think the different manner in which the two classes wereoriginally subdued would suffice to account for; partly because Idoubt whether the handful of Dorians who first fixed their dangeroussettlement in Laconia could have effectually subjugated the Helots, ifthe latter had not previously been inured to slavery. The objectionto this hypothesis--that the Helots could scarcely have so hated theSpartans if they had merely changed masters, does not appear to mevery cogent. Under the mild and paternal chiefs of the Homeric age[145], they might have been subjected to a much gentler servitude.Accustomed to the manners and habits of their Achaean lords, theymight have half forgotten their condition; and though governed bySpartans in the same external relations, it was in a very differentspirit. The sovereign contempt with which the Spartans regarded theHelots, they would scarcely have felt for a tribe distinguished fromthe more honoured Perioeci only by a sterner valour and a greaterregard for freedom; while that contempt is easily accounted for, ifits objects were the previously subdued population of a country theSpartans themselves subdued.

The Helots were considered the property of the state--but they wereintrusted and leased, as it were, to individuals; they were bound tothe soil; even the state did not arrogate the power of selling themout of the country; they paid to their masters a rent in corn--thesurplus profits were their own. It was easier for a Helot than for aSpartan to acquire riches--but riches were yet more useless to him.Some of the Helots attended their masters at the public tables, andothers were employed in all public works: they served in the field aslight-armed troops: they were occasionally emancipated, but there wereseveral intermediate grades between the Helot and the freeman; theirnominal duties were gentle indeed when compared with the spirit inwhich they were regarded and the treatment they received. That muchexaggeration respecting the barbarity of their masters existed isprobable enough; but the exaggeration itself, among writers accustomedto the institution of slavery elsewhere, and by no means addicted toan overstrained humanity, is a proof of the manner in which thetreatment of the Helots was viewed by the more gentle slave-masters ofthe rest of Greece. They were branded with ineffaceable dishonour: noHelot might sing a Spartan song; if he but touched what belonged to aSpartan it was profaned--he was the Pariah of Greece. The ephors--thepopular magistrates--the guardians of freedom--are reported byAristotle to have entered office in making a formal declaration of waragainst the Helots--probably but an idle ceremony of disdain andinsult. We cannot believe with Plutarch, that the infamous cryptiawas instituted for the purpose he assigns--viz., that it was anambuscade of the Spartan youths, who dispersed themselves through thecountry, and by night murdered whomsoever of the Helots they couldmeet. But it is certain that a select portion of the younger Spartansranged the country yearly, armed with daggers, and that with theobject of attaining familiarity with military hardships was associatedthat of strict, stern, and secret surveillance over the Helotpopulation. No Helot, perhaps, was murdered from mere wantonness; butwho does not see how many would necessarily have been butchered at theslightest suspicion of disaffection, or for the faintest utility ofexample? These miserable men were the objects of compassion to allGreece. "It was the common opinion," says Aelian, "that theearthquake in Sparta was a judgment from the gods upon the Spartaninhumanity to the Helots." And perhaps in all history (not evenexcepting that awful calmness with which the Italian historiansnarrate the cruelties of a Paduan tyrant or a Venetian oligarchy)there is no record of crime more thrilling than that dark and terriblepassage in Thucydides which relates how two thousand Helots, the bestand bravest of their tribe, were selected as for reward and freedom,how they were led to the temples in thanksgiving to the gods--and howthey disappeared, their fate notorious--the manner of it a mystery!

XIII. Besides the Helots, the Spartans exercised an authority overthe intermediate class called the Perioeci. These were indubitablythe old Achaean race, who had been reduced, not to slavery, but todependance. They retained possession of their own towns, estimated innumber, after the entire conquest of Messenia, at one hundred. Theyhad their own different grades and classes, as the Saxons retainedtheirs after the conquest of the Normans. Among these were thetraders and manufacturers of Laconia; and thus whatever art attainedof excellence in the dominions of Sparta was not Spartan but Achaean.They served in the army, sometimes as heavy-armed, sometimes as light-armed soldiery, according to their rank or callings; and one of thePerioeci obtained the command at sea. They appear, indeed, to havebeen universally acknowledged throughout Greece as free citizens, yetdependant subjects. But the Spartans jealously and sternly maintainedthe distinction between exemption from the servitude of a Helot, andparticipation in the rights of a Dorian: the Helot lost his personalliberty--the Perioecus his political.

XIV. The free or purely Spartan population (as not improbably withevery Doric state) was divided into three generic tribes--the Hyllean,the Dymanatan, and the Pamphylian: of these the Hyllean (the reputeddescendants of the son of Hercules) gave to Sparta both her kings.Besides these tribes of blood or race, there were also five localtribes, which formed the constituency of the ephors, and thirtysubdivisions called obes--according to which the more aristocraticoffices appear to have been elected. There were also recognised inthe Spartan constitution two distinct classes--the Equals and theInferiors. Though these were hereditary divisions, merit mightpromote a member of the last--demerit degrade a member of the first.The Inferiors, though not boasting the nobility of the Equals, oftenpossessed men equally honoured and powerful: as among the commoners ofEngland are sometimes found persons of higher birth and more importantstation than among the peers--(a term somewhat synonymous with thatof Equal.) But the higher class enjoyed certain privileges which wecan but obscurely trace [146]. Forming an assembly among themselves,it may be that they alone elected to the senate; and perhaps they werealso distinguished by some peculiarities of education--an assertionmade by Mr. Mueller, but not to my mind sufficiently established.With respect to the origin of this distinction between the Inferiorsand the Equals, my own belief is, that it took place at some period(possibly during the Messenian wars) when the necessities of a failingpopulation induced the Spartans to increase their number by theadmixture either of strangers, but (as that hypothesis is scarceagreeable to Spartan manners) more probably of the Perioeci; the newcitizens would thus be the Inferiors. Among the Greek settlements inItaly, it was by no means uncommon for a colony, once sufficientlyestablished, only to admit new settlers even from the parent stateupon inferior terms; and in like manner in Venice arose thedistinction between the gentlemen and the citizens; for when to thatsea-girt state many flocked for security and refuge, it seemed butjust to give to the prior inhabitants the distinction of hosts, and toconsider the immigrators as guests;--to the first a share in theadministration and a superior dignity--to the last only shelter andrepose.

XV. Such are the general outlines of the state and constitution ofSparta--the firmest aristocracy that perhaps ever existed, for it wasan aristocracy on the widest base. If some Spartans were noble, everySpartan boasted himself gentle. His birth forbade him to work, andhis only profession was the sword. The difference between the meanestSpartan and his king was not so great as that between a Spartan and aPerioecus. Not only the servitude of the Helots, but the subjectionof the Perioeci, perpetually nourished the pride of the superior race;and to be born a Spartan was to be born to power. The sense ofsuperiority and the habit of command impart a certain elevation to themanner and the bearing. There was probably more of dignity in thepoorest Spartan citizen than in the wealthiest noble of Corinth--themost voluptuous courtier of Syracuse. And thus the reserve, thedecorum, the stately simplicity of the Spartan mien could not butimpose upon the imagination of the other Greeks, and obtain the creditfor correspondent qualities which did not always exist beneath thatlofty exterior. To lively nations, affected by externals, there wasmuch in that sedate majesty of demeanour; to gallant nations, much inthat heroic valour; to superstitious nations, much in that proverbialregard to religious rites, which characterized the Spartan race.Declaimers on luxury admired their simplicity--the sufferers frominnovation, their adherence to ancient manners. Many a victim of theturbulence of party in Athens sighed for the repose of theLacedaemonian city; and as we always exaggerate the particular evilswe endure, and admire most blindly the circumstances most opposite tothose by which we are affected, so it was often the fashion of moreintellectual states to extol the institutions of which they saw onlyfrom afar and through a glass the apparent benefits, without examiningthe concomitant defects. An Athenian might laud the Spartanausterity, as Tacitus might laud the German barbarism; it was thepanegyric of rhetoric and satire, of wounded patriotism ordisappointed ambition. Although the ephors made the government reallyand latently democratic, yet the concentration of its action made itseemingly oligarchic; and in its secrecy, caution, vigilance, andenergy, it exhibited the best of the oligarchic features. Whateverwas democratic by law was counteracted in its results by all that wasaristocratic in custom. It was a state of political freedom, but ofsocial despotism. This rigidity of ancient usages was binding longafter its utility was past. For what was admirable at one time becamepernicious at another; what protected the infant state fromdissension, stinted all luxuriance of intellect in the more maturedcommunity. It is in vain that modern writers have attempted to denythis fact--the proof is before us. By her valour Sparta was long themost eminent state of the most intellectual of all countries; and whenwe ask what she has bequeathed to mankind--what she has left us inrivalry to that Athens, whose poetry yet animates, whose philosophyyet guides, whose arts yet inspire the world--we find only the namesof two or three minor poets, whose works have perished, and some halfa dozen pages of pithy aphorisms and pointed repartees!

XVI. My object in the above sketch has been to give a general outlineof the Spartan character and the Spartan system during the earlier andmore brilliant era of Athenian history, without entering intounnecessary conjectures as to the precise period of each law and eachchange. The social and political state of Sparta became fixed by herconquest of Messenia. It is not within the plan of my undertaking toretail at length the legendary and for the most part fabulous accountsof the first and second Messenian wars. The first was dignified bythe fate of the Messenian hero Aristodemus, and the fall of the rockyfortress of Ithome; its result was the conquest of Messenia (probablybegun 743 B. C., ended 723); the inhabitants were compelled to an oathof submission, and to surrender to Sparta half their agriculturalproduce. After the first Messenian war, Tarentum was founded by aSpartan colony, composed, it is said, of youths [147], the offspringof Spartan women and Laconian men, who were dissatisfied with theirexclusion from citizenship, and by whom the state was menaced with aformidable conspiracy shared by the Helots. Meanwhile, theMessenians, if conquered, were not subdued. Years rolled away, andtime had effaced the remembrance of the past sufferings, but not ofthe ancient [148] liberties.

It was among the youth of Messenia that the hope of the nationaldeliverance was the most intensely cherished. At length, in Andania,the revolt broke forth. A young man, pre-eminent above the rest forbirth, for valour, and for genius, was the head and the soul of theenterprise (probably B. C. 679). His name was Aristomenes. Formingsecret alliances with the Argives and Arcadians, he at length venturedto raise his standard, and encountered at Dera, on their own domains,the Spartan force. The issue of the battle was indecisive; still,however, it seems to have seriously aroused the fears of Sparta: nofurther hostilities took place till the following year; the oracle atDelphi was solemnly consulted, and the god ordained the Spartans toseek their adviser in an Athenian. They sent to Athens and obtainedTyrtaeus. A popular but fabulous account [149] describes him as alame teacher of grammar, and of no previous repute. His songs and hisexhortations are said to have produced almost miraculous effects. Iomit the romantic adventures of the hero Aristomenes, though it may bedoubted whether all Grecian history can furnish passages that surpassthe poetry of his reputed life. I leave the reader to learn elsewherehow he hung at night a shield in the temple of Chalcioecus, in thevery city of the foe, with the inscription, that Aristomenes dedicatedto the goddess that shield from the spoils of the Spartans--how hepenetrated the secret recesses of Trophonius--how he was deterred fromentering Sparta by the spectres of Helen and the Dioscuri--how, takenprisoner in an attempt to seize the women of Aegila, he was releasedby the love of the priestess of Ceres--how, again made captive, andcast into a deep pit with fifty of his men, he escaped by seizing holdof a fox (attracted thither by the dead bodies), and suffering himselfto be drawn by her through dark and scarce pervious places to a holethat led to the upper air. These adventures, and others equallyromantic, I must leave to the genius of more credulous historians.

All that seems to me worthy of belief is, that after stern butunavailing struggles, the Messenians abandoned Andania, and took theirlast desperate station at Ira, a mountain at whose feet flows theriver Neda, separating Messenia from Triphylia. Here, fortified alikeby art and nature, they sustained a siege of eleven years. But withthe eleventh the term of their resistance was completed. The slave ofa Spartan of rank had succeeded in engaging the affections of aMessenian woman who dwelt without the walls of the mountain fortress.One night the guilty pair were at the house of the adulteress--thehusband abruptly returned--the slave was concealed, and overheardthat, in consequence of a violent and sudden storm, the Messenianguard had deserted the citadel, not fearing attack from the foe on sotempestuous a night, and not anticipating the inspection ofAristomenes, who at that time was suffering from a wound. The slaveoverheard--escaped--reached the Spartan camp--apprized his masterEmperamus (who, in the absence of the kings, headed the troops) of thedesertion of the guard:--an assault was agreed on: despite thedarkness of the night, despite the violence of the rain, the Spartansmarched on:--scaled the fortifications:--were within the walls. Thefulfilment of dark prophecies had already portended the fate of thebesieged; and now the very howling of the dogs in a strange andunwonted manner was deemed a prodigy. Alarmed, aroused, theMessenians betook themselves to the nearest weapons within theirreach. Aristomenes, his son Gorgus, Theoclus, the guardian prophet ofhis tribe (whose valour was equal to his science), were among thefirst to perceive the danger. Night passed in tumult and disorder.Day dawned, but rather to terrify than encourage--the storm increased--the thunder burst--the lightning glared. What dismayed the besiegedencouraged the besiegers. Still, with all the fury of despair, theMessenians fought on: the very women took part in the contest; deathwas preferable, even in their eyes, to slavery and dishonour. But theSpartans were far superior in number, and, by continual reliefs, thefresh succeeded to the weary. In arms for three days and three nightswithout respite, worn out with watching, with the rage of theelements, with cold, with hunger, and with thirst, no hope remainedfor the Messenians: the bold prophet declared to Aristomenes that thegods had decreed the fall of Messene, that the warning oracles werefulfilled. "Preserve," he cried, "what remain of your forces--saveyourselves. Me the gods impel to fall with my country!" Thus saying,the soothsayer rushed on the enemy, and fell at last covered withwounds and satiated with the slaughter himself had made. Aristomenescalled the Messenians round him; the women and the children wereplaced in the centre of the band, guarded by his own son and that ofthe prophet. Heading the troop himself, he rushed on the foe, and byhis gestures and the shaking of his spear announced his intention toforce a passage, and effect escape. Unwilling yet more to exasperatemen urged to despair, the Spartans made way for the rest of thebesieged. So fell Ira! (probably B. C. 662). [150] The braveMessenians escaped to Mount Lyceum in Arcadia, and afterward thegreater part, invited by Anaxilaus, their own countryman, prince ofthe Dorian colony at Rhegium in Italy, conquered with him theZanclaeans of Sicily, and named the conquered town Messene. It stillpreserves the name [151]. But Aristomenes, retaining indomitablehatred to Sparta, refused to join the colony. Yet hoping a day ofretribution, he went to Delphi. What counsel he there received isunrecorded. But the deity ordained to Damagetes, prince of Jalysus inRhodes, to marry the daughter of the best man of Greece. Such a manthe prince esteemed the hero of the Messenians, and wedded the thirddaughter of Aristomenes. Still bent on designs against the destroyersof his country, the patriot warrior repaired to Rhodes, where deathdelivered the Spartans from the terror of his revenge. A monument wasraised to his memory, and that memory, distinguished by publichonours, long made the boast of the Messenians, whether those indistant exile, or those subjected to the Spartan yoke. Thus ended thesecond Messenian war. Such of the Messenians as had not abandonedtheir country were reduced to Helotism. The Spartan territoryextended, and the Spartan power secured, that haughty state roseslowly to pre-eminence over the rest of Greece; and preserved, amidthe advancing civilization and refinement of her neighbours, the sternand awing likeness of the heroic age:--In the mountains of thePeloponnesus, the polished and luxurious Greeks beheld, retained fromchange as by a spell, the iron images of their Homeric ancestry!

CHAPTER VII.

Governments in Greece.

I. The return of the Heraclidae occasioned consequences of which themost important were the least immediate. Whenever the Dorians forceda settlement, they dislodged such of the previous inhabitants asrefused to succumb. Driven elsewhere to seek a home, the exiles foundit often in yet fairer climes, and along more fertile soils. Theexample of these involuntary migrators became imitated whereverdiscontent prevailed or population was redundant: and hence, as I havealready recorded, first arose those numerous colonies, which along theAsiatic shores, in the Grecian isles, on the plains of Italy, and evenin Libya and in Egypt, were destined to give, as it were, a secondyouth to the parent states.

II. The ancient Greek constitution was that of an aristocracy, with aprince at the head. Suppose a certain number of men, thus governed,to be expelled their native soil, united by a common danger and commonsuffering, to land on a foreign shore, to fix themselves with pain andlabour in a new settlement--it is quite clear that a popular principlewould insensibly have entered the forms of the constitution theytransplanted. In the first place, the power of the prince would bemore circumscribed--in the next place, the free spirit of thearistocracy would be more diffused: the first, because the authorityof the chief would rarely be derived from royal ancestry, or hallowedby prescriptive privilege; in most cases he was but a noble, selectedfrom the ranks, and crippled by the jealousies, of his order: thesecond, because all who shared in the enterprise would in one respectrise at once to an aristocracy--they would be distinguished from thepopulation of the state they colonized. Misfortune, sympathy, andchange would also contribute to sweep away many demarcations; andauthority was transmuted from a birthright into a trust, the moment itwas withdrawn from the shelter of ancient custom, and made the gift ofthe living rather than a heritage from the dead. It was probable,too, that many of such colonies were founded by men, among whom wasbut little disparity of rank: this would be especially the case withthose which were the overflow of a redundant population; the great andthe wealthy are never redundant!--the mass would thus ordinarily becomposed of the discontented and the poor, and even where thearistocratic leaven was most strong, it was still the aristocracy ofsome defeated and humbled faction. So that in the average equality ofthe emigrators were the seeds of a new constitution; and if theytransplanted the form of monarchy, it already contained the genius ofrepublicanism. Hence, colonies in the ancient, as in the modernworld, advanced by giant strides towards popular principles.Maintaining a constant intercourse with their father-land, their ownconstitutions became familiar and tempting to the population of thecountries they had abandoned; and much of whatsoever advantages werederived from the soil they selected, and the commerce they foundwithin their reach, was readily attributed only to their more popularconstitutions; as, at this day, we find American prosperity held outto our example, not as the result of local circumstances, but as thecreature of political institutions.

One principal cause of the republican forms of government that began(as, after the Dorian migration, the different tribes became settledin those seats by which they are historically known) to spreadthroughout Greece, was, therefore, the establishment of coloniesretaining constant intercourse with the parent states. A second causeis to be found in the elements of the previous constitutions of theGrecian states themselves, and the political principles which existeduniversally, even in the heroic ages: so that, in fact, the changefrom monarchy to republicanism was much less violent than at the firstglance it would seem to our modern notions. The ancient kings, asdescribed by Homer, possessed but a limited authority, like that ofthe Spartan kings--extensive in war, narrow in peace. It wasevidently considered that the source of their authority was in thepeople. No notion seems to have been more universal among the Greeksthan that it was for the community that all power was to be exercised.In Homer's time popular assemblies existed, and claimed the right ofconferring privileges on rank. The nobles were ever jealous of theprerogative of the prince, and ever encroaching on his accidentalweakness. In his sickness, his age, or his absence, the power of thestate seems to have been wrested from his hands--the prey of thechiefs, or the dispute of contending factions. Nor was there inGreece that chivalric fealty to a person which characterizes theNorth. From the earliest times it was not the MONARCH, that calledforth the virtue of devotion, and inspired the enthusiasm of loyalty.Thus, in the limited prerogative of royalty, in the jealousy of thechiefs, in the right of popular assemblies, and, above all, in thesilent and unconscious spirit of political theory, we may recognise inthe early monarchies of Greece the germes of their inevitabledissolution. Another cause was in that singular separation of tribes,speaking a common language, and belonging to a common race, whichcharacterized the Greeks. Instead of overrunning a territory in onevast irruption, each section seized a small district, built a city,and formed an independent people. Thus, in fact, the Hellenicgovernments were not those of a country, but of a town; and the words"state" and "city" were synonymous [152]. Municipal constitutions, intheir very nature, are ever more or less republican; and, as in theItalian states, the corporation had only to shake off some powerunconnected with, or hostile to it, to rise into a republic. To thisit may be added, that the true republican spirit is more easilyestablished among mountain tribes imperfectly civilized, and yet freshfrom the wildness of the natural life, than among old states, whereluxury leaves indeed the desire, but has enervated the power ofliberty, "as the marble from the quarry may be more readily wroughtinto the statue, than that on which the hand of the workman hasalready been employed." [153]

III. If the change from monarchy to republicanism was not veryviolent in itself, it appears to have been yet more smoothed away bygradual preparations. Monarchy was not abolished, it declined. Thedirect line was broken, or some other excuse occurred for exchangingan hereditary for an elective monarchy; then the period of powerbecame shortened, and from monarchy for life it was monarchy only fora certain number of years: in most cases the name too (and how much isthere in names!) was changed, and the title of ruler or magistratesubstituted for that of king.

Thus, by no sudden leap of mind, by no vehement and short-livedrevolutions, but gradually, insensibly, and permanently, monarchyceased--a fashion, as it were, worn out and obsolete--andrepublicanism succeeded. But this republicanism at first was probablyin no instance purely democratic. It was the chiefs who were thevisible agents in the encroachments on the monarchic power--it was anaristocracy that succeeded monarchy. Sometimes this aristocracy wasexceedingly limited in number, or the governing power was usurped by aparticular faction or pre-eminent families; then it was called anOLIGARCHY. And this form of aristocracy appears generally to havebeen the most immediate successor to royalty. "The first polity,"says Aristotle [154], "that was established in Greece after the lapseof monarchies, was that of the members of the military class, andthose wholly horsemen," . . . . . "such republics, though calleddemocracies, had a strong tendency to oligarchy, and even to royalty."[155] But the spirit of change still progressed: whether they werefew or many, the aristocratic governors could not fail to open thedoor to further innovations. For, if many, they were subjected todissensions among themselves--if few, they created odium in all whowere excluded from power. Thus fell the oligarchies of Marseilles,Ister, and Heraclea. In the one case they were weakened by their ownjealousies, in the other by the jealousies of their rivals. Theprogress of civilization and the growing habits of commerce graduallyintroduced a medium between the populace and the chiefs. The MIDDLECLASS slowly rose, and with it rose the desire of extended libertiesand equal laws. [156]

IV. Now then appeared the class of DEMAGOGUES. The people had beenaccustomed to change. They had been led against monarchy, and foundthey had only resigned the one master to obtain the many:--A demagoguearose, sometimes one of their own order, more often a dissatisfied,ambitious, or empoverished noble. For they who have wasted theirpatrimony, as the Stagirite shrewdly observes, are great promoters ofinnovation! Party ran high--the state became divided--passions werearoused--and the popular leader became the popular idol. His life wasprobably often in danger from the resentment of the nobles, and it wasalways easy to assert that it was so endangered.--He obtained a guardto protect him, conciliated the soldiers, seized the citadel, and roseat once from the head of the populace to the ruler of the state. Suchwas the common history of the tyrants of Greece, who never supplantedthe kingly sway (unless in the earlier ages, when, born to a limitedmonarchy, they extended their privileges beyond the law, as Pheidon ofArgos), but nearly always aristocracies or oligarchies [157]. I needscarcely observe that the word "tyrant" was of very differentsignification in ancient times from that which it bears at present.It more nearly corresponded to our word "usurper," and denoted onewho, by illegitimate means, whether of art or force, had usurped thesupreme authority. A tyrant might be mild or cruel, the father of thepeople, or their oppressor; he still preserved the name, and it wastransmitted to his children. The merits of this race of rulers, andthe unconscious benefits they produced, have not been justlyappreciated, either by ancient or modern historians. Without hertyrants, Greece might never have established her democracies. As maybe readily supposed, the man who, against powerful enemies, often froma low origin and with empoverished fortunes, had succeeded inascending a throne, was usually possessed of no ordinary abilities.It was almost vitally necessary for him to devote those abilities tothe cause and interests of the people. Their favour had alone raisedhim--numerous foes still surrounded him--it was on the people alonethat he could depend.

The wiser and more celebrated tyrants were characterized by an extrememodesty of deportment--they assumed no extraordinary pomp, no loftytitles--they left untouched, or rendered yet more popular, the outwardforms and institutions of the government--they were not exacting intaxation--they affected to link themselves with the lowest orders, andtheir ascendency was usually productive of immediate benefit to theworking classes, whom they employed in new fortifications or newpublic buildings; dazzling the citizens by a splendour that seemedless the ostentation of an individual than the prosperity of a state.But the aristocracy still remained their enemies, and it was againstthem, not against the people, that they directed their acutesagacities and unsparing energies. Every more politic tyrant was aLouis the Eleventh, weakening the nobles, creating a middle class. Heeffected his former object by violent and unscrupulous means. Heswept away by death or banishment all who opposed his authority orexcited his fears. He thus left nothing between the state and ademocracy but himself; himself removed, democracy ensued naturally andof course. There are times in the history of all nations when libertyis best promoted--when civilization is most rapidly expedited--whenthe arts are most luxuriantly nourished by a strict concentration ofpower in the hands of an individual--and when the despot is but therepresentative of the popular will [158]. At such times did thetyrannies in Greece mostly flourish, and they may almost be said tocease with the necessity which called them forth. The energy of thesemasters of a revolution opened the intercourse with other states;their interests extended commerce; their policy broke up the sullenbarriers of oligarchical prejudice and custom; their fears foundperpetual vent for the industry of a population whom they dreaded toleave in indolence; their genius appreciated the arts--their vanityfostered them. Thus they interrupted the course of liberty only toimprove, to concentre, to advance its results. Their dynasty neverlasted long; the oldest tyranny in Greece endured but a hundred years[159]--so enduring only from its mildness. The son of the tyrantrarely inherited his father's sagacity and talents: he sought tostrengthen his power by severity; discontent ensued, and his fall wassudden and complete. Usually, then, such of the aristocracy as hadbeen banished were recalled, but not invested with their formerprivileges. The constitution became more or less democratic. It istrue that Sparta, who lent her powerful aid in destroying tyrannies,aimed at replacing them by oligarchies--but the effort seldom produceda permanent result: the more the aristocracy was narrowed, the morecertain was its fall. If the middle class were powerful--if commercethrived in the state--the former aristocracy of birth was soonsucceeded by an aristocracy of property (called a timocracy), and thiswas in its nature certain of democratic advances. The moment youwiden the suffrage, you may date the commencement of universalsuffrage. He who enjoys certain advantages from the possession of tenacres, will excite a party against him in those who have nine; and thearguments that had been used for the franchise of the one are equallyvalid for the franchise of the other. Limitations of power byproperty are barriers against a tide which perpetually advances.Timocracy, therefore, almost invariably paved the way to democracy.But still the old aristocratic faction, constantly invaded, remainedpowerful, stubborn, and resisting, and there was scarcely a state inGreece that did not contain the two parties which we find to-day inEngland, and in all free states--the party of the movement to thefuture, and the party of recurrence to the past; I say the past, forin politics there is no present! Wherever party exists, if the onedesire fresh innovations, so the other secretly wishes not to preservewhat remains, but to restore what has been. This fact it is necessaryalways to bear in mind in examining the political contests of theAthenians. For in most of their domestic convulsions we find thecause in the efforts of the anti-popular party less to resist newencroachments than to revive departed institutions. But though inmost of the Grecian states were two distinct orders, and theEupatrids, or "Well-born," were a class distinct from, and superiorto, that of the commonalty, we should err in supposing that theseparate orders made the great political divisions. As in England themore ancient of the nobles are often found in the popular ranks, so inthe Grecian states many of the Eupatrids headed the democratic party.And this division among themselves, while it weakened the power of thewell-born, contributed to prevent any deadly or ferocious revolutions:for it served greatly to soften the excesses of the predominantfaction, and every collision found mediators between the contendingparties in some who were at once friends of the people and members ofthe nobility. Nor should it be forgotten that the triumph of thepopular party was always more moderate than that of the antagonistfaction--as the history of Athens will hereafter prove.

V. The legal constitutions of Greece were four--Monarchy, Oligarchy,Aristocracy, and Democracy; the illegal, was Tyranny in a twofoldshape, viz., whether it consisted in an usurped monarchy or an usurpedoligarchy. Thus the oligarchy of the Thirty in Athens was no less atyranny than the single government of Pisistratus. Even democracy hadits illegal or corrupt form--in OCHLOCRACY or mob rule; for democracydid not signify the rule of the lower orders alone, but of all thepeople--the highest as the lowest. If the highest became by lawexcluded--if the populace confined the legislative and executiveauthorities to their own order--then democracy, or the government of awhole people, virtually ceased, and became the government of a part ofthe people--a form equally unjust and illegitimate--equally an abusein itself, whether the dominant and exclusive portion were the noblesor the mechanics. Thus in modern yet analogous history, when themiddle class of Florence expelled the nobles from any share of thegovernment, they established a monopoly under the name of liberty; andthe resistance of the nobles was the lawful struggle of patriots andof freemen for an inalienable privilege and a natural right.

VI. We should remove some very important prejudices from our minds,if we could once subscribe to a fact plain in itself, but which thecontests of modern party have utterly obscured--that in the mere formsof their government, the Greek republics cannot fairly be pressed intothe service of those who in existing times would attest the evils, orproclaim the benefits, of constitutions purely democratic. In thefirst place, they were not democracies, even in their most democraticshape:--the vast majority of the working classes were the enslavedpopulation. And, therefore, to increase the popular tendencies of therepublic was, in fact, only to increase the liberties of the few. Wemay fairly doubt whether the worst evils of the ancient republics, inthe separation of ranks, and the war between rich and poor, were notthe necessary results of slavery. We may doubt, with equalprobability, whether much of the lofty spirit, and the universalpassion for public affairs, whence emanated the enterprise, thecompetition, the patriotism, and the glory of the ancient cities,could have existed without a subordinate race to carry on thedrudgeries of daily life. It is clear, also, that much of theintellectual greatness of the several states arose from the exceedingsmallness of their territories--the concentration of internal power,and the perpetual emulation with neighbouring and kindred statesnearly equal in civilization; it is clear, too, that much of thevicious parts of their character, and yet much of their morebrilliant, arose from the absence of the PRESS. Their intellectualstate was that of men talked to, not written to. Their imaginationwas perpetually called forth--their deliberative reason rarely;--theywere the fitting audience for an orator, whose art is effective inproportion to the impulse and the passion of those he addresses. Normust it be forgotten that the representative system, which is theproper conductor of the democratic action, if not wholly unknown tothe Greeks [160], and if unconsciously practised in the Spartanephoralty, was at least never existent in the more democratic states.And assemblies of the whole people are compatible only with thosesmall nations of which the city is the country. Thus, it would beimpossible for us to propose the abstract constitution of any ancientstate as a warning or an example to modern countries which possessterritories large in extent--which subsist without a slave population--which substitute representative councils for popular assemblies--andwhich direct the intellectual tastes and political habits of a people,not by oratory and conversation, but through the more calm anddispassionate medium of the press. This principle settled, it mayperhaps be generally conceded, that on comparing the democracies ofGreece with all other contemporary forms of government, we find themthe most favourable to mental cultivation--not more exposed thanothers to internal revolutions--usually, in fact, more durable,--moremild and civilized in their laws--and that the worst tyranny of theDemus, whether at home or abroad, never equalled that of an oligarchyor a single ruler. That in which the ancient republics are properlymodels to us, consists not in the form, but the spirit of theirlegislation. They teach us that patriotism is most promoted bybringing all classes into public and constant intercourse--thatintellect is most luxuriant wherever the competition is widest andmost unfettered--and that legislators can create no rewards and inventno penalties equal to those which are silently engendered by societyitself--while it maintains, elaborated into a system, the desire ofglory and the dread of shame.

CHAPTER VIII.

Brief Survey of Arts, Letters, and Philosophy in Greece, prior to theLegislation of Solon.

I. Before concluding this introductory portion of my work, it will benecessary to take a brief survey of the intellectual state of Greeceprior to that wonderful era of Athenian greatness which commenced withthe laws of Solon. At this period the continental states of Greecehad produced little in that literature which is now the heirloom ofthe world. Whether under her monarchy, or the oligarchicalconstitution that succeeded it, the depressed and languid genius ofAthens had given no earnest of the triumphs she was afterward destinedto accomplish. Her literature began, though it cannot be said to haveceased, with her democracy. The solitary and doubtful claim of thebirth--but not the song--of Tyrtaeus (fl. B. C. 683), is the highestliterary honour to which the earlier age of Attica can pretend; andmany of the Dorian states--even Sparta itself--appear to have beenmore prolific in poets than the city of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Butthroughout all Greece, from the earliest time, was a general passionfor poetry, however fugitive the poets. The poems of Homer are themost ancient of profane writings--but the poems of Homer themselvesattest that they had many, nor ignoble, precursors. Not only do theyattest it in their very excellence--not only in their reference toother poets--but in the general manner of life attributed to chiefsand heroes. The lyre and the song afford the favourite entertainmentat the banquet [161]. And Achilles, in the interval of his indignantrepose, exchanges the deadly sword for the "silver harp,"

"And sings The immortal deeds of heroes and of kings." [162]

II. Ample tradition and the internal evidence of the Homeric poemsprove the Iliad at least to have been the composition of an AsiaticGreek; and though the time in which he flourished is yet warmlydebated, the most plausible chronology places him about the time ofthe Ionic migration, or somewhat less than two hundred years after theTrojan war. The following lines in the speech of Juno in the fourthbook of the Iliad are supposed by some [163] to allude to the returnof the Heraclidae and the Dorian conquests in the Peloponnesus:--

"Three towns are Juno's on the Grecian plains, More dear than all th' extended earth contains-- Mycenae, Argos, and the Spartan Wall-- These mayst thou raze, nor I forbid their fall; 'Tis not in me the vengeance to remove; The crime's sufficient that they share my love." [164]

And it certainly does seem to me that in a reference so distinct tothe three great Peloponnesian cities which the Dorians invaded andpossessed, Homer makes as broad an allusion to the conquests of theHeraclidae, not only as would be consistent with the pride of an IonicGreek in attesting the triumphs of the national Dorian foe, but as thenature of a theme cast in a distant period, and remarkably removed, inits general conduct, from the historical detail of subsequent events,would warrant to the poet [165]. And here I may observe, that if thedate thus assigned to Homer be correct, the very subject of the Iliadmight have been suggested by the consequences of the Dorian irruption.Homer relates,

"Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring Of woes unnumbered."

But Achilles is the native hero of that Thessalian district, which wasthe earliest settlement of the Dorian family. Agamemnon, whoseinjuries he resents, is the monarch of the great Achaean race, whosedynasty and dominion the Dorians are destined to overthrow. It istrue that at the time of the Trojan war the Dorians had migrated fromPhthiotis to Phocis--it is true that Achilles was not of Dorianextraction; still there would be an interest attached to the singularcoincidence of place; as, though the English are no descendants fromthe Britons, we yet associate the British history with our own: henceit seems to me, though I believe the conjecture is new, that it is notthe whole Trojan war, but that episode in the Trojan war (otherwiseunimportant) illustrated by the wrath of Achilles, which awakens theinspiration of the poet. In fact, if under the exordium of the Iliadthere lurk no typical signification, the exordium is scarceappropriate to the subject. For the wrath of Achilles did not bringupon the Greeks woes more mighty than the ordinary course of war wouldhave destined them to endure. But if the Grecian audience (exiles,and the posterity of exiles), to whom, on Asiatic shores, Homerrecited his poem, associated the hereditary feud of Achilles andAgamemnon with the strife between the ancient warriors of Phthiotisand Achaia; then, indeed, the opening lines assume a solemn andprophetic significance, and their effect must have been electricalupon a people ever disposed to trace in the mythi of their ancestrythe legacies of a dark and ominous fatality, by which each presentsuffering was made the inevitable result of an immemorial cause. [166]

III. The ancients unanimously believed the Iliad the production of asingle poet; in recent times a contrary opinion has been started; andin Germany, at this moment, the most fashionable belief is, that thatwonderful poem was but a collection of rhapsodies by various poets,arranged and organized by Pisistratus and the poets of his day; atheory a scholar may support, but which no poet could ever haveinvented! For this proposition the principal reasons alleged arethese:--It is asserted as an "indisputable fact," "that the art ofwriting, and the use of manageable writing materials, were entirely,or all but entirely, unknown in Greece and its islands at the supposeddate of the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey; that, if so, thesepoems could not have been committed to writing during the time of suchtheir composition; that, in a question of comparative probabilitieslike this, it is a much grosser improbability that even the singleIliad, amounting, after all curtailments and expungings, to upwards of15,000 hexameter lines, should have been actually conceived andperfected in the brain of one man, with no other help but his own orothers' memory, than that it should in fact be the result of thelabours of several distinct authors; that if the Odyssey be counted,the improbability is doubled; that if we add, upon the authority ofThucydides and Aristotle, the Hymns and Margites, not to say theBatrachomyomachia, that which was improbable becomes morallyimpossible! that all that has been so often said as to the fact of asmany verses or more having been committed to memory, is beside thepoint in question, which is not whether 15,000 or 30,000 lines may notbe learned by heart from print or manuscript, but whether one man canoriginally compose a poem of that length, which, rightly or not, shallbe thought to be a perfect model of symmetry and consistency of parts,without the aid of writing materials;--that, admitting the superiorprobability of such an achievement in a primitive age, we know nothingactually similar or analogous to it; and that it so transcends thecommon limits of intellectual power, as at the least to merit, with asmuch justice as the opposite opinion, the character of improbability."[167]

And upon such arguments the identity of Homer is to be destroyed! Letus pursue them seriatim.

1st. "The art and the use of manageable writing materials wereentirely, or all but entirely, unknown in Greece and its islands atthe supposed date of the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey."

The whole argument against the unity of Homer rests upon thisassertion; and yet this assertion it is impossible to prove! It isallowed, on the contrary, that alphabetical characters were introducedin Greece by Cadmus--nay, inscriptions believed by the bestantiquaries to bear date before the Trojan war are found even amongthe Pelasgi of Italy. Dionysius informs us that the Pelasgi firstintroduced letters into Italy. But in answer to this, it is said thatletters were used only for inscriptions on stone or wood, and not forthe preservation of writings so voluminous. If this were the case, Iscarcely see why the Greeks should have professed so grateful areminiscence of the gift of Cadmus, the mere inscription of a fewwords on stone would not be so very popular or beneficial aninvention! But the Phoenicians had constant intercourse with theEgyptians and Hebrews; among both those nations the art and materialsof writing were known. The Phoenicians, far more enterprising thaneither, must have been fully acquainted with their means of writtencommunication--and indeed we are assured that they were so. Now, if aPhoenician had imparted so much of the art to Greece as the knowledgeof a written alphabet, is it probable that he would have suffered thecommunication to cease there! The Phoenicians were a commercialpeople--their colonies in Greece were for commercial purposes,--wouldthey have wilfully and voluntarily neglected the most convenient modeof commercial correspondence?--importing just enough of the art tosuffice for inscriptions of no use but to the natives, would they havestopped short precisely at that point when the art became useful tothemselves? And in vindicating that most able people from so wilful afolly, have we no authority in history as well as common sense? Wehave the authority of Herodotus! When he informs us that thePhoenicians communicated letters to the Ionians, he adds, that by avery ancient custom the Ionians called their books diptherae, orskins, because, at a time when the plant of the bibles or papyrus wasscarce [168], they used instead of it the skins of goats and sheep--acustom he himself witnessed among barbarous nations. Were suchmaterials used only for inscriptions relative to a religiousdedication, or a political compact? NO; for then, wood or stone--thetemple or the pillar--would have been the material for theinscription,--they must, then, have been used for a more literarypurpose; and verse was the first form of literature. I grant thatprior, and indeed long subsequent to the time of Homer, the art ofwriting (as with us in the dark ages) would be very partially known--that in many parts of Greece, especially European Greece, it mightscarcely ever be used but for brief inscriptions. But that is nothingto the purpose;--if known at all--to any Ionian trader--even to anyneighbouring Asiatic--even to any Phoenician settler--there is everyreason to suppose that Homer himself, or a contemporary disciple andreciter of his verses, would have learned both the art and the use ofthe materials which could best have ensured the fame of the poet, orassisted the memory of the reciter. And, though Plutarch in himselfalone is no authority, he is not to be rejected as a corroborativetestimony when he informs us that Lycurgus collected and transcribedthe poems of Homer; and that writing was then known in Greece isevident by the very ordinance of Lycurgus that his laws should not bewritten. But Lycurgus is made by Apollodorus contemporary with Homerhimself; and this belief appears, to receive the sanction of the mostlaborious and profound of modern chronologers [169]. I might adducevarious other arguments in support of those I have already advanced;but I have said enough already to show that it is not an "indisputablefact" that Homer could not have been acquainted with writingmaterials; and that the whole battery erected to demolish the fame ofthe greatest of human geniuses has been built upon a most uncertainand unsteady foundation. It may be impossible to prove that Homer'spoems were written, but it is equally impossible to prove that theywere not--and if it were necessary for the identity of Homer that hispoems should have been written, that necessity would have been one ofthe strongest proofs, not that Homer did not exist, but that writingdid!

But let us now suppose it proved that writing materials for a literarypurpose were unknown, and examine the assertions built upon thathypothesis.

2d. "That if these poems could not have been committed to writingduring the time of their composition, it is a much grosserimprobability that even the single Iliad, amounting, after allcurtailments and expungings, to upwards of 15,000 hexameter lines,should have been actually conceived and perfected in the brain of oneman, with no other help but his own or others' memory, than that itshould, in fact, be the result of the labours of several distinctauthors."

I deny this altogether. "The improbability" might be "grosser" if theIliad had been composed in a day! But if, as any man of common sensewould acknowledge, it was composed in parts or "fyttes" of moderatelength at a time, no extraordinary power of memory, or tension ofthought, would have been required by the poet. Such parts, oncerecited and admired, became known and learned by a hundredprofessional bards, and were thus orally published, as it were, indetached sections, years perhaps before the work was completed. Allthat is said, therefore, about the difficulty of composing so long apoem without writing materials is but a jargon of words. Suppose nowriting materials existed, yet, as soon as portions of a few hundredlines at a time were committed to the memory of other minstrels, theauthor would, in those minstrels, have living books whereby to refreshhis memory, and could even, by their help, polish and amend what wasalready composed. It would not then have been necessary for the poethimself perfectly and verbally to remember the whole work. He had histablets of reference in the hearts and lips of others, and even, if itwere necessary that he himself should retain the entire composition,the constant habit of recital, the constant exercise of memory, wouldrender such a task by no means impracticable or unprecedented. As forthe unity of the poem, thus composed, it would have been, as it is,the unity, not of technical rules and pedantic criticism, but theunity of interest, character, imagery, and thought--a unity whichrequired no written references to maintain it, but which was theessential quality of one master-mind, and ought to be, to all plainmen, an irrefragable proof that one mind alone conceived and executedthe work.

IV. So much for the alleged improbability of one author for theIliad. But with what face can these critics talk of "probability,"when, in order to get rid of one Homer, they ask us to believe intwenty! Can our wildest imagination form more monstrous hypothesesthan these, viz.--that several poets, all possessed of the veryhighest order of genius (never before or since surpassed), lived inthe same age--that that genius was so exactly similar in each, that wecannot detect in the thoughts, the imagery, the conception andtreatment of character, human and divine, as manifest in each, theleast variety in these wonderful minds--that out of the immense storeof their national legends, they all agreed in selecting one subject,the war of Troy--that of that subject they all agreed in selectingonly one portion of time, from the insult of Achilles to theredemption of the body of Hector--that their different mosaics sonicely fitted one into the other, that by the mere skill of an ableeditor they were joined into a whole, so symmetrical that the acutestingenuity of ancient Greece could never discover the imposture [170]--and that, of all these poets, so miraculous in their genius, no singlename, save that of Homer, was recorded by the general people to whomthey sung, or claimed by the peculiar tribe whose literature theyought to have immortalized? If everything else were wanting to provethe unity of Homer, this prodigious extravagance of assumption, intowhich a denial of that unity has driven men of no common learning andintellect, would be sufficient to establish it.

3d. "That if the Odyssey be counted, the improbability is doubled;that if we add, upon the authority of Thucydides and Aristotle, theHymns and Margites, not to say the Batrachomyomachia, that which wasimprobable becomes morally impossible."

Were these last-mentioned poems Homer's, there would yet be nothingimprobable in the invention and composition of minor poems withoutwriting materials; and the fact of his having composed one long poem,throws no difficulty in the way of his composing short ones. We havealready seen that the author need not himself have remembered them allhis life. But this argument is not honest, for the critics who haveproduced it agree in the same breath, when it suits their purpose,that the Hymns, etc., are not Homer's--and in this I concur withtheir, and the almost universal, opinion.

The remaining part of the analysis of the hostile argument has alreadybeen disposed of in connexion with the first proposition.

It now remains to say a few words upon the authorship of the Odyssey.

V. The question, whether or not the two epics of the Iliad andOdyssey were the works of the same poet, is a very different one fromthat which we have just discussed. Distinct and separate, indeed, arethe inquiries whether Greece might produce, at certain intervals oftime, two great epic poets, selecting opposite subjects--and whetherGreece produced a score or two of great poets, from whose desultoryremains the mighty whole of the Iliad was arranged. Even the ancientsof the Alexandrine school did not attribute the Odyssey to the authorof the Iliad. The theme selected--the manners described--themythological spirit--are all widely different in the two works, andone is evidently of more recent composition than the other. But, formy own part, I do not think it has been yet clearly established thatall these acknowledged differences are incompatible with the sameauthorship. If the Iliad were written in youth, the travels of thepoet, the change of mind produced by years and experience, thefacility with which an ancient Greek changed or remodelled his pliantmythology, the rapidity with which (in the quick development ofcivilization in Greece) important changes in society and manners werewrought, might all concur in producing, from the mature age of thepoet, a poem very different to that which he composed in youth. Andthe various undetected interpolations and alterations supposed to befoisted into the Odyssey may have originated such detailed points ofdifference as present the graver obstacles to this conjecture.Regarding the Iliad and Odyssey as wholes, they are so analogous inall the highest and rarest attributes of genius, that it is almost asimpossible to imagine two Homers as it is two Shakspeares. Nor isthere such a contrast between the Iliad and the Odyssey as there isbetween any one play of Shakspeare's and another [171]. Still, Ishould warn the general reader, that the utmost opposition that canreasonably and effectually be made to those who assign to differentauthors these several epics, limits itself rather to doubt than todenial.

VI. It is needless to criticise these immortal masterpieces; not thatcriticism upon them is yet exhausted--not that a most useful, and evennovel analysis of their merits and character may not yet be performed,nor that the most striking and brilliant proofs of the unity of eachpoem, separately considered, may not be established by one who shall,with fitting powers, undertake the delightful task of deducing theindividuality of the poet from the individualizing character of hiscreations, and the peculiar attributes of his genius. With humanworks, as with the divine, the main proof of the unity of the authoris in his fidelity to himself:--Not then as a superfluous, but as fartoo lengthened and episodical a labour, if worthily performed, do Iforego at present a critical survey of the two poems popularlyascribed to Homer.

The early genius of Greece devoted itself largely to subjects similarto those which employed the Homeric muse. At a later period--probablydating at the Alexandrian age--a vast collection of ancient poems wasarranged into what is termed the "Epic Cycle;" these commenced at theTheogony, and concluded with the adventures of Telemachus. Though nolonger extant, the Cyclic poems enjoyed considerable longevity. Thegreater part were composed between the years 775 B. C. and 566 B. C.They were extant in the time of Proclus, A. D. 450; the eldest,therefore, endured at least twelve, the most recent ten centuries;--save a few scattered lines, their titles alone remain, solitarytokens, yet floating above the dark oblivion which has swept over theepics of thirty bards! But, by the common assent, alike of thecritics and the multitude, none of these approached the remote age,still less the transcendent merits, of the Homeric poems.

VII. But, of earlier date than these disciples of Homer, is a poetryof a class fundamentally distinct from the Homeric, viz., thecollection attributed to Hesiod. Of one of these only, a rustic andhomely poem called "Works and Days," was Hesiod considered the authorby his immediate countrymen (the Boeotians of Helicon); but the moregeneral belief assigned to the fertility of his genius a variety ofother works, some of which, if we may judge by the titles, aimed at aloftier vein [172]. And were he only the author of the "Works andDays"--a poem of very insignificant merit [173]--it would be scarcelypossible to account for the high estimation in which Hesiod was heldby the Greeks, often compared, and sometimes preferred, to the mightyand majestic Homer. We must either, then, consider Hesiod as theauthor of many writings superior perhaps to what we now possess, or,as is more plausibly and popularly supposed by modern critics, therepresentative and type, as it were, of a great school of nationalpoetry. And it has been acutely suggested that, viewing the pastoraland lowly occupation he declares himself to pursue [174], combinedwith the subjects of his muse, and the place of his birth, we maybelieve the name of Hesiod to have been the representative of thepoetry, not of the victor lords, but of the conquered people,expressive of their pursuits, and illustrative of their religion.This will account for the marked and marvellous difference between themartial and aristocratic strain of Homer and the peaceful and rusticverse of Hesiod [175], as well as for the distinction no less visiblebetween the stirring mythology of the one and the thoughtful theogonyof the other. If this hypothesis be accepted, the Hesiodic era mightvery probably have commenced before the Homeric (although what is nowascribed to Hesiod is evidently of later date than the Iliad and theOdyssey). And Hesiod is to Homer what the Pelasgic genius was to theHellenic. [176]

VIII. It will be obvious to all who study what I may call the naturalhistory of poetry, that short hymns or songs must long have precededthe gigantic compositions of Homer. Linus and Thamyris, and, moredisputably, Orpheus, are recorded to have been the precursors ofHomer, though the poems ascribed to them (some of which still remain)were of much later date. Almost coeval with the Grecian gods weredoubtless religious hymns in their honour. And the germe of the greatlyrical poetry that we now possess was, in the rude chants of thewarlike Dorians, to that Apollo who was no less the Inspirer than theProtector. The religion of the Greeks preserved and dignified thepoetry it created; and the bard, "beloved by gods as men," becameinvested, as well with a sacred character as a popular fame. Beneaththat cheerful and familiar mythology, even the comic genius shelteredits license, and found its subjects. Not only do the earliest of thecomic dramatists seem to have sought in mythic fables their charactersand plots, but, far before the DRAMA itself arose in any of theGrecian states, comic recital prepared the way for comicrepresentation. In the eighth book of the Odyssey, the splendidAlcinous and the pious Ulysses listen with delight to the story, evenbroadly ludicrous, how Vulcan nets and exposes Venus and her war-godlover--

"All heaven beholds imprisoned as they lie, And unextinguished laughter shakes the sky."

And this singular and well-known effusion shows, not only how graveand reverent an example Epicharmus had for his own audaciousportraiture of the infirmities of the Olympian family, but howimmemorially and how deeply fixed in the popular spirit was thedisposition to draw from the same source the elements of humour and ofawe.

But, however ancient the lyrical poetry of Greece, its masterpieces ofart were composed long subsequent to the Homeric poems; and, no doubt,greatly influenced by acquaintance with those fountains of universalinspiration. I think it might be shown that lyrical poetry developeditself, in its more elaborate form, earliest in those places where thepoems of Homer are most likely to have been familiarly known.

The peculiar character of the Greek lyrical poetry can only beunderstood by remembering its inseparable connexion with music; andthe general application of both, not only to religious but politicalpurposes. The Dorian states regarded the lyre and the song aspowerful instruments upon the education, the manners, and the nationalcharacter of their citizens. With them these arts were watched andregulated by the law, and the poet acquired something of the socialrank, and aimed at much of the moral design, of a statesman and alegislator: while, in the Ionian states, the wonderful stir andagitation, the changes and experiments in government, the rapid growthof luxury, commerce, and civilization, afforded to a poetry which wasnot, as with us, considered a detached, unsocial, and solitary art,but which was associated with every event of actual life--occasions ofvast variety--themes of universal animation. The eloquence of poetrywill always be more exciting in its appeals--the love for poetryalways more diffused throughout a people, in proportion as it is lesswritten than recited. How few, even at this day, will read a poem!--what crowds will listen to a song! Recitation transfers the stage ofeffect from the closet to the multitude--the public becomes anaudience, the poet an orator. And when we remember that the poetry,thus created, imbodying the most vivid, popular, animated subjects ofinterest, was united with all the pomp of festival and show--all thegrandest, the most elaborate, and artful effects of music--we mayunderstand why the true genius of lyrical composition has passed forever away from the modern world.

As early as between 708 and 665 B. C., Archilochus brought toperfection a poetry worthy of loftier passions than those which mostlyanimated his headstrong and angry genius. In 625 (thirty-one yearsbefore the legislation of Solon) flourished Arion, the Lesbian, who,at Corinth, carried, to extraordinary perfection the heroic adaptationof song to choral music. In 611 flourished the Sicilian, Stersichorus--no unworthy rival of Arion; while simultaneously, in strains lessnational and Grecian, and more resembling the inspiration of modernminstrels, Alcaeus vented his burning and bitter spirit;--and Sappho(whose chaste and tender muse it was reserved for the chivalry of anorthern student, five-and-twenty centuries after the hand was coldand the tongue was mute, to vindicate from the longest-continuedcalumny that genius ever endured) [177] gave to the most ardent ofhuman passions the most delicate colouring of female sentiment.Perhaps, of all that Greece has bequeathed to us, nothing is soperfect in its concentration of real feeling as the fragments ofSappho. In one poem of a few lines--nor that, alas! transmitted to uscomplete--she has given a picture of the effect of love upon one wholoves, to which volumes of the most eloquent description couldscarcely add a single new touch of natural pathos--so subtle is it,yet so simple. I cannot pass over in silence the fragments ofMimnermus (fl. B. C. 630)--they seem of an order so little akin to theusual character of Grecian poetry; there is in them a thoughtfulthough gloomy sadness, that belongs rather to the deep northernimagination than the brilliant fancies of the west; their melancholyis mixed with something half intellectual--half voluptuous--indicativeof the mournful but interesting wisdom of satiety. Mimnermus is aprincipal model of the Latin elegiac writers--and Propertius compareshis love verses with those of Homer. Mimnermus did not invent theelegiac form (for it was first applied to warlike inspiration byanother Ionian poet, Callinus); but he seems the founder of what wenow call the elegiac spirit in its association of the sentiment ofmelancholy with the passion of love.

IX. While such was the state of POETRY in Greece--torpid in theIonian Athens, but already prodigal in her kindred states of Asia andthe Isles; gravely honoured, rather than produced, in Sparta;--splendidly welcomed, rather than home-born, in Corinth;--the Asiaticcolonies must also claim the honour of the advance of the sister arts.But in architecture the Dorian states of European Greece, Sicyon,Aegina, and the luxurious Corinth, were no unworthy competitors withIonia.

In the heroic times, the Homeric poems, especially the Odyssey, attestthe refinement and skill to which many of the imitative arts ofGrecian civilization had attained. In embroidery, the high-bornoccupation of Helen ad Penelope, were attempted the most complex anddifficult designs; and it is hard to suppose that these subjects couldhave been wrought upon garments with sufficient fidelity to warrantthe praise of a poet who evidently wrote from experience of what hehad seen, if the art of DRAWING had not been also carried to someexcellence--although to PAINTING itself the poet makes none butdubious and obscure allusions. Still, if, on the one hand [178], inembroidery, and upon arms (as the shield of Achilles), delineation inits more complex and minute form was attempted,--and if, on the otherhand, the use of colours was known (which it was, as applied not onlyto garments but to ivory), it could not have been long before two suchkindred elements of the same art were united. Although it iscontended by many that rude stones or beams were the earliest objectsof Grecian worship, and though it is certain that in several placessuch emblems of the Deity preceded the worship of images, yet to thesuperstitious art of the rude Pelasgi in their earliest age, uncouthand half-formed statues of Hermes are attributed, and the idol iscommemorated by traditions almost as antique as those which attest thesanctity of the fetiche [179]. In the Homeric age, SCULPTURE inmetals, and on a large scale, was certainly known. By the door ofAlcinous, the king of an island in the Ionian Sea, stand rows of dogsin gold and silver--in his hall, upon pedestals, are golden statues ofboys holding torches; and that such sculpture was even then dedicatedto the gods is apparent by a well-known passage in the earlier poem ofthe Iliad; which represents Theano, the Trojan priestess of Minerva,placing the offering of Hecuba upon the knees of the statue of thegoddess. How far, however, such statues could be called works of art,or how far they were wrought by native Greeks, it is impossible todetermine [180]. Certain it is that the memorable and giganticadvance in the art of SCULPTURE was not made till about the 50thOlympiad (B. C. 580), when Dipaenus and Scyllis first obtainedcelebrity in works in marble (wood and metals were the earliestmaterials of sculpture). The great improvements in the art seem tohave been coeval with the substitution of the naked for the drapedfigure. Beauty, and ease, and grace, and power, were the result ofthe anatomical study of the human form. ARCHITECTURE has bequeathedto us, in the Pelasgic and Cyclopean remains, sufficient to indicatethe massive strength it early acquired in parts of Greece. In theHomeric times, the intercourse with Asia had already given somethingof lightness to the elder forms. Columns are constantly introducedinto the palaces of the chiefs, profuse metallic ornaments decoratethe walls; and the Homeric palaces, with their cornices gaylyinwrought with blue--their pillars of silver on bases of brass, risingamid vines and fruit-trees,--even allowing for all the exaggerationsof the poet,--dazzle the imagination with much of the gaudiness andglitter of an oriental city [181]. At this period Athens receivesfrom Homer the epithet of "broad-streeted:" and it is by no meansimprobable that the city of the Attic king might have presented to atraveller, in the time of Homer, a more pleasing general appearancethan in its age of fame, when, after the Persian devastations, itsstately temples rose above narrow and irregular streets, and thejealous effects of democracy forbade to the mansions of individualnobles that striking pre-eminence over the houses of the commonaltywhich would naturally mark the distinction of wealth and rank, in amonarchical, or even an oligarchical government.

X. About the time on which we now enter, the extensive commerce andfree institutions of the Ionian colonies had carried all the arts justreferred to far beyond the Homeric time. And, in addition to theactivity and development of the intellect in all its faculties whichprogressed with the extensive trade and colonization of Miletus(operating upon the sensitive, inquiring, and poetical temperament ofthe Ionian population), a singular event, which suddenly opened toGreece familiar intercourse with the arts and lore of Egypt, gaveconsiderable impetus to the whole Grecian MIND.

In our previous brief survey of the state of the Oriental world, wehave seen that Egypt, having been rent into twelve principalities, hadbeen again united under a single monarch. The ambitious and fortunatePsammetichus was enabled, by the swords of some Ionian and Carianadventurers (who, bound on a voyage of plunder, had been driven uponthe Egyptian shores), not only to regain his own dominion, from whichhe had been expelled by the jealousy of his comrades, but to acquirethe sole sovereignty of Egypt (B. C. 670). In gratitude for theirservices, Psammetichus conferred upon his wild allies certain lands atthe Pelusian mouth of the Nile, and obliged some Egyptian children tolearn the Grecian language;--from these children descended a class ofinterpreters, that long afterward established the facilities offamiliar intercourse between Greece and Egypt. Whatever, before thattime, might have been the migrations of Egyptians into Greece, thesewere the first Greeks whom the Egyptians received among themselves.Thence poured into Greece, in one full and continuous stream, theEgyptian influences, hitherto partial and unfrequent. [182]

In the same reign, according to Strabo, the Asiatic Greeks obtained asettlement at Naucratis, the ancient emporium of Egypt; and thecommunication, once begun, rapidly increased, until in the subsequenttime of Amasis (B. C. 569) we find the Ionians, the Dorians, theAeolians of Asia, and even the people of Aegina and Samos [183],building temples and offering worship amid the jealous and mysticpriestcrafts of the Nile. This familiar and advantageous intercoursewith a people whom the Greeks themselves considered the wisest on theearth, exercised speedy and powerful effect upon their religion andtheir art. In the first it operated immediately upon their modes ofdivination and their mystic rites--in the last, the influence was lessdirect. It is true that they probably learned from the Egyptians manytechnical rules in painting and in sculpture; they learned how to cutthe marble and to blend the colours, but their own genius taught themhow to animate the block and vivify the image. We have seen already,that before this event, art had attained to a certain eminence amongthe Greeks--fortunately, therefore, what they now acquired was not thefoundation of their lore. Grafted on a Grecian stock, every shootbore Grecian fruit: and what was borrowed from mechanism wasreproduced in beauty [184]. As with the arts, so with the SCIENCES;we have reason to doubt whether the Egyptian sages, whose minds wereswathed and bandaged in the cerements of hereditary rules, never toswell out of the slavery of castes, had any very sound and enlightenedphilosophy to communicate: their wisdom was probably exaggerated bythe lively and credulous Greeks, awed by the mysticism of the priests,the grandeur of the cities, the very rigidity, so novel to them, ofimposing and antique custom. What, then, was the real benefit of theintercourse? Not so much in satisfying as in arousing and stimulatingthe curiosity of knowledge. Egypt, to the Greeks, was as America toEurope--the Egyptians taught them little, but Egypt much. And thatwhat the Egyptians did directly communicate was rather the materialfor improvement than the improvement itself, this one gift is anindividual example and a general type;--the Egyptians imparted to theGreeks the use of the papyrus--the most easy and popular material forwriting; we are thus indebted to Egypt for a contrivance that has donemuch to preserve to us--much, perhaps, to create for us--a Plato andan Aristotle; but for the thoughts of Aristotle and Plato we areindebted to Greece alone:--the material Egyptian--the manufactureGreek.

XI. The use of the papyrus had undoubtedly much effect upon theformation of prose composition in Greece, but it was by no means aninstantaneous one. At the period on which we now enter (about B. C.600), the first recorded prose Grecian writer had not composed hisworks. The wide interval between prose in its commencement and poetryin its perfection is peculiarly Grecian; many causes conspired toproduce it, but the principal one was, that works, if written, beingnot the less composed to be recited, not read--were composed tointerest and delight, rather than formally to instruct. Poetry was,therefore, so obviously the best means to secure the end of theauthor, that we cannot wonder to find that channel of appealuniversally chosen; the facility with which the language formed itselfinto verse, and the license that appears to have been granted to thegravest to assume a poetical diction without attempting the poeticalspirit, allowed even legislators and moralists to promulgate preceptsand sentences in the rhythm of a Homer and a Hesiod. And since lawswere not written before the time of Draco, it was doubly necessarythat they should he cast in that fashion by which words are mostdurably impressed on the memory of the multitude. Even on Solon'sfirst appearance in public life, when he inspires the Athenians toprosecute the war with Megara, he addresses the passions of the crowd,not by an oration, but a poem; and in a subsequent period, when prosecomposition had become familiar, it was still in verse that Hipparchuscommunicated his moral apothegms. The origin of prose in Greece is,therefore, doubly interesting as an epoch, not only in theintellectual, but also in the social state. It is clear that it wouldnot commence until a reading public was created; and until, amid thepoetical many, had sprung up the grave and studious few. Accordingly,philosophy, orally delivered, preceded prose composition--and Thalestaught before Pherecydes wrote [185]. To the superficial it may seemsurprising that literature, as distinct from poetry, should commencewith the most subtle and laborious direction of the human intellect:yet so it was, not only in Greece, but almost universally. In nearlyall countries, speculative conjecture or inquiry is the firstsuccessor to poetry. In India, in China, in the East, some dimphilosophy is the characteristic of the earliest works--sometimesinculcating maxims of morality--sometimes allegorically shadowingforth, sometimes even plainly expressing, the opinions of the authoron the mysteries of life--of nature--of the creation. Even with themoderns, the dawn of letters broke on the torpor of the dark ages ofthe North in speculative disquisition; the Arabian and theAristotelian subtleties engaged the attention of the earliestcultivators of modern prose (as separated from poetic fiction), andthe first instinct of the awakened reason was to grope through themisty twilight after TRUTH. Philosophy precedes even history; menwere desirous of solving the enigmas of the world, before theydisentangled from tradition the chronicles of its former habitants.

If we examine the ways of an infant we shall cease to wonder at thoseof an infant civilization. Long before we can engage the curiosity ofthe child in the History of England--long before we can induce him tolisten with pleasure to our stories even of Poictiers and Cressy--and(a fortiori) long before he can be taught an interest in Magna Chartaand the Bill of Rights, he will of his own accord question us of thephenomena of nature--inquire how he himself came into the world--delight to learn something of the God we tell him to adore--and findin the rainbow and the thunder, in the meteor and the star, a thousandsubjects of eager curiosity and reverent wonder. The why perpetuallytorments him;--every child is born a philosopher!--the child is theanalogy of a people yet in childhood. [186]

XII. It may follow as a corollary from this problem, that the Greeksof themselves arrived at the stage of philosophical inquiry withoutany very important and direct assistance from the lore of Egypt andthe East. That lore, indeed, awakened the desire, but it did notguide the spirit of speculative research. And the main cause whyphilosophy at once assumed with the Greeks a character distinct fromthat of the Oriental world, I have already intimated [187], in theabsence of a segregated and privileged religious caste. Philosophythus fell into the hands of sages, not of priests. And whatever theIonian states (the cradle of Grecian wisdom) received from Egypt orthe East, they received to reproduce in new and luxuriant prodigality.The Ionian sages took from an elder wisdom not dogmas never to bequestioned, but suggestions carefully to be examined. It thusfortunately happened that the deeper and maturer philosophy of Greeceproper had a kind of intermedium between the systems of other nationsand its own. The Eastern knowledge was borne to Europe through theGreek channels of Asiatic colonies, and became Hellenized as itpassed. Thus, what was a certainty in the East, became a propositionin Ionia, and ultimately a doubt, at Athens. In Greece, indeed, aseverywhere, religion was connected with the first researches ofphilosophy. From the fear of the gods, to question of the nature ofthe gods, is an easy transition. The abundance and variety of popularsuperstitions served but to stimulate curiosity as to their origin;and since in Egypt the sole philosophers were the priests, a Greekcould scarcely converse with an Egyptian on the articles of hisreligion without discussing also the principles of his philosophy.Whatever opinions the Greek might then form and promulge, beingsheltered beneath no jealous and prescriptive priestcraft, all hadunfettered right to canvass and dispute them, till by little andlittle discussion ripened into science.

The distinction, in fine, between the Greeks and their contemporarieswas this: if they were not the only people that philosophized, theywere the only people that said whatever they pleased about philosophy.Their very plagiarism from the philosophy of other creeds wasfortunate, inasmuch as it presented nothing hostile to the nationalsuperstition. Had they disputed about the nature of Jupiter, or theexistence of Apollo, they might have been persecuted, but they couldstart at once into disquisitions upon the eternity of matter, or theprovidence of a pervading mind.

XIII. This spirit of innovation and discussion, which made thecharacteristic of the Greeks, is noted by Diodorus. "Unlike theChaldaeans," he observes, "with whom philosophy is delivered from sireto son, and all other employment rejected by its cultivators, theGreeks come late to the science--take it up for a short time--desertit for a more active means of subsistence--and the few who surrenderthemselves wholly to it practise for gain, innovate the most importantdoctrines, pay no reverence to those that went before, create newsects, establish new theorems, and, by perpetual contradictions,entail perpetual doubts." Those contradictions and those doubts madeprecisely the reason why the Greeks became the tutors of the world!

There is another characteristic of the Greeks indicated by this remarkof Diodorus. Their early philosophers, not being exempted from otheremployments, were not the mere dreamers of the closet and the cell.They were active, practical, stirring men of the world. They werepoliticians and moralists as well as philosophers. The practicalpervaded the ideal, and was, in fact, the salt that preserved it fromdecay. Thus legislation and science sprung simultaneously into life,and the age of Solon is the age of Thales.

XIV. Of the seven wise men (if we accept that number) who flourishedabout the same period, six were rulers and statesmen. They wereeminent, not as physical, but as moral, philosophers; and their wisdomwas in their maxims and apothegms. They resembled in much the waryand sagacious tyrants of Italy in the middle ages--masters of men'sactions by becoming readers of their minds. Of these seven, Perianderof Corinth (began to reign B. C. 625, died B. C. 585) and Cleobulus ofLindus (fl. B. C. 586), tyrants in their lives, and cruel in theiractions, were, it is said, disowned by the remaining five [188]. Butgoodness is not the necessary consequence of intellect, and, despitetheir vices, these princes deserved the epithet of wise. Of Cleobuluswe know less than of Periander; but both governed with prosperity, anddied in old age. If we except Pisistratus, Periander was the greatestartist of all that able and profound fraternity, who, under the nameof tyrants, concentred the energies of their several states, andprepared the democracies by which they were succeeded. Periander'sreputed maxims are at variance with his practice; they breathe aspirit of freedom and a love of virtue which may render us suspiciousof their authenticity--the more so as they are also attributed toothers. Nevertheless, the inconsistency would be natural, for reasonmakes our opinions, and circumstance shapes our actions. "A democracyis better than a tyranny," is an aphorism imputed to Periander: butwhen asked why he continued tyrant, he answered, "Because it isdangerous willingly to resist, or unwillingly to be deposed." Hisprinciples were republican, his position made him a tyrant. He issaid to have fallen into extreme dejection in his old age; perhapsbecause his tastes and his intellect were at war with his life.Chilo, the Lacedaemonian ephor, is placed also among the seven. Hismaxims are singularly Dorian--they breathe reverence of the dead andsuspicion of the living. "Love," he said (if we may take theauthority of Aulus Gellius, fl. B. C. 586), "as if you might hereafterhate, and hate as if you might hereafter love." Another favouritesentence of his was, "to a surety loss is at hand." [189] A third,"we try gold by the touchstone. Gold is the touchstone of the mind."Bias, of Priene in Ionia, is quoted, in Herodotus, as the author of anadvice to the Ionians to quit their country, and found a common cityin Sardinia (B. C. 586). He seems to have taken an active part in allcivil affairs. His reputed maxims are plain and homely--theelementary principles of morals. Mitylene in Lesbos boasted thecelebrated Pittacus (began to govern B. C. 589, resigned 579, died569). He rose to the tyranny of the government by the free voice ofthe people; enjoyed it ten years, and voluntarily resigned it, ashaving only borne the dignity while the state required the directionof a single leader. It was a maxim with him, for which he is reprovedby Plato, "That to be good is hard." His favourite precept was, "Knowoccasion:" and this he amplified in another (if rightly attributed tohim), "To foresee and prevent dangers is the province of the wise--todirect them when they come, of the brave."

XV. Of Solon, the greatest of the seven, I shall hereafter speak atlength. I pass now to Thales (born B. C. 639);--the founder ofphilosophy, in its scientific sense--the speculative incontradistinction to the moral: Although an ardent republican, Thalesalone, of the seven sages, appears to have led a private and studiouslife. He travelled, into Crete, Asia, and at a later period intoEgypt. According to Laertius, Egypt taught him geometry. He issupposed to have derived his astrological notions from Phoenicia. Butthis he might easily have done without visiting the Phoenician states.Returning to Miletus, he obtained his title of Wise [190]. Muchlearning has been exhausted upon his doctrines to very little purpose.They were of small value, save as they led to the most valuable of allphilosophies--that of experiment. They were not new probably even inGreece [191], and of their utility the following brief sketch willenable the reader to judge for himself.

He maintained that water, or rather humidity, was the origin of allthings, though he allowed mind or intellect (nous) to be the impellingprinciple. And one of his arguments in favour of humidity, asrendered to us by Plutarch and Stobaeus, is pretty nearly as follows:--"Because fire, even in the sun and the stars, is nourished byvapours proceeding from humidity,--and therefore the whole worldconsists of the same." Of the world, he supposed the whole to beanimated by, and full of, the Divinity--its Creator--that in it was novacuum--that matter was fluid and variable. [192]

He maintained the stars and sun to be earthly, and the moon of thesame nature as the sun, but illumined by it. Somewhat more valuablewould appear to have been his geometrical science, could we withaccuracy attribute to Thales many problems claimed also, and moreprobably, by Pythagoras and later reasoners. He is asserted to havemeasured the pyramids by their shadows. He cultivated astronomy andastrology; and Laertius declares him to have been the first Greek thatforetold eclipses. The yet higher distinction has been claimed forThales of having introduced among his countrymen the doctrine of theimmortality of the soul. But this sublime truth, though connectedwith no theory of future rewards and punishments, was received inGreece long before his time. Perhaps, however, as the expressions ofCicero indicate, Thales might be the first who attempted to givereasons for what was believed. His reasons were, nevertheless,sufficiently crude and puerile; and having declared it the property ofthe soul to move itself, and other things, he was forced to give asoul to the loadstone, because it moved iron!

These fantastic doctrines examined, and his geometrical orastronomical discoveries dubious, it may be asked, what did Thaleseffect for philosophy? Chiefly this: he gave reasons for opinions--hearoused the dormant spirit of inquiry--he did for truths what thelegislators of his age did for the people--left them active andstirring to free and vigorous competition. He took Wisdom out ofdespotism, and placed her in a republic--he was in harmony with thegreat principle of his age, which was investigation, and nottradition; and thus he became the first example of that great truth--that to think freely is the first step to thinking well. Itfortunately happened, too, that his moral theories, howeverinadequately argued upon, were noble and exalting. He contended forthe providence of a God, as well as for the immortality of man. Heasserted vice to be the most hateful, virtue the most profitable ofall things [193]. He waged war on that vulgar tenacity of life whichis the enemy to all that is most spiritual and most enterprising inour natures, and maintained that between life and death there is nodifference--the fitting deduction from a belief in the continuousexistence of the soul [194]. His especial maxim was the celebratedprecept, "Know thyself." His influence was vigorous and immediate.How far he created philosophy may be doubtful, but he createdphilosophers. From the prolific intelligence which his fame andresearches called into being, sprang a new race of thoughts, whichcontinued in unbroken succession until they begat descendantsillustrious and immortal. Without the hardy errors of Thales,Socrates might have spent his life in spoiling marble, Plato mighthave been only a tenth-rate poet, and Aristotle an intriguingpedagogue.

XVI. With this I close my introductory chapters, and proceed fromdissertation into history;--pleased that our general survey of Greeceshould conclude with an acknowledgment of our obligations to theIonian colonies. Soon, from the contemplation of those enchantingclimes; of the extended commerce and the brilliant genius of thepeople--the birthplace of the epic and the lyric muse, the first homeof history, of philosophy, of art;--soon, from our survey of the riseand splendour of the Asiatic Ionians, we turn to the agony of theirstruggles--the catastrophe of their fall. Those wonderful children ofGreece had something kindred with the precocious intellect that isoften the hectic symptom of premature decline. Originating, advancingnearly all which the imagination or the reason can produce, while yetin that social youth which promised a long and a yet more gloriousexistence--while even their great parent herself had scarcely emergedfrom the long pupilage of nations, they fell into the feebleness ofage! Amid the vital struggles, followed by the palsied and prostrateexhaustion of her Ionian children, the majestic Athens suddenly arosefrom the obscurity of the past to an empire that can never perish,until heroism shall cease to warm, poetry to delight, and wisdom toinstruct the future.